Today we would like to bring to your attention an article by Richard V. Piacentini, executive director of Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, about sustainable museums’ food service operations. The article was recently published on the American Association of Museums Blog.

The fundamental question is: “How museums (and other institutions) can bring the operation of their food services into alignment with their mission-related values while still attending to the financial bottom line?“

Richard concludes the article with this statement:

“Unfortunately, the current economics of most food service contracts cause difficulty in making mission-based decisions. Museums usually find a vendor that will absorb the losses from a food service in exchange for exclusive catering rights and an agreement to pay a guaranteed percentage of catering revenues. This model is a recipe for failure, since the food service vendor has every incentive to serve as inexpensive a product as they can in order to mitigate their losses, making it hard to implement dramatic changes in your café. Usually, you are then limited to little tweaks here and there, stirring the same old pot when what you really need to do is shake things up and start from scratch. The field needs a new economic model for food services that helps us make values-based operational decisions. At Phipps, we pay an outside vendor a management fee, and we make the profits and absorb the losses. It is riskier, but it gives us the control we desire.” Are there other ways to accomplish similar goals?

Here is how GCC makes it happen

We design sustainability strategies for institutions’ food service (mostly schools and museums) in order to make their operations more sustainable. The strategies are holistic and embrace food and non-food items, waste management, energy and water consumption, education, and stakeholders engagement. Some of these operations (connected with waste, water, and energy) are often inefficient. By implementing targeted actions, institutions can obtain great $ savings. Reinvesting these savings into the system allows them to buy more sustainable food and non-food items. That’s the key: sustainable operations are not only environmentally beneficial but financially profitable.

What we have done with The Field Museum (Chicago, IL) and Niles Township High School D219 (Skokie, IL) is to insert the sustainability strategy and goals (annual, achievable, measurable) into their Request for Proposal (RFP) for new food service providers (FSP). By contract the new FSP will have to comply with them. Part of our services consists in monitoring their operations to ensure they respect the contract.

If you would like to learn more about how we can make it happen in your school or museum, contact us!